There may be rare occasions when a police force in Southeast Texas needs to use an MRAP, a "mine-resistant, ambush-protected" vehicle donated by the Pentagon after use in Iraq or Afghanistan. And at those times, it's good to have one.

But 99 percent of time, extreme military gear like that is not applicable to daily police work. If it's there, however, a department could be tempted to deploy it when a lesser approach might work better.

The issue has jumped to the forefront after the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., and the riots that followed. Many Americans were uneasy at the sight of law enforcement officers who looked like soldiers. And a lot of their military-style equipment was given to their departments after being declared surplus by our real military.

It's happening in Southeast Texas too. The Jefferson County sheriff's office has an MRAP, which has been used twice so far. Many local agencies have been given M-16 automatic rifles. The donations include other types of non-lethal gear too, like tents or binoculars.

One factor here is a common one for federal grants or surplus property. If it's available from Washington, state and local agencies may put in a request whether it's vital or not. All that can happen is some bureaucrat says no. And that's why some small towns or isolated rural communities with little history of violence like Chickasaw, Ala., have 15-ton MRAPs that may never be deployed.

This program must be rethought at the national level, by Congress. The heavy-duty military hardware should not be handed out to whoever asks for it just because the bureaucratic momentum is churning forward.